Ingredients--Flour

A lot can be said about flour, and I'll probably say more in later posts. This is just basics to get started with.

Flours differ a lot from one country to another. Since I live in the United States, I'm know a great deal more about the flour here than about any other.

For breadmaking, one very important factor is the protein, or gluten, content of the flour. The gluten forms the structure of the bread. (An aside: At this point, I know almost nothing about gluten free baking.)

Here are a few of the flour types I use regularly:

Unbleached All Purpose Flour--I never use bleached, because the unbleached tastes better. I don't use AP flour for bread, except for fat free recipes like French bread.

Bread Flour--This is a very high gluten flour. In French bread, which contains no shortening, it makes the crust too hard, and you get cracks all over the loaf that look like the cracks in a very beat up concrete sidewalk. However, I do use it in pizza dough and as part of flour mixtures that include low gluten flours like rye. It often works well in breads that have a fairly high fat content, because fat helps control the gluten structure. (That's why it's called "shortening." It shortens gluten strands in baked goods.)

Whole Wheat Flour--This contains the bran and germ of the wheat, which is milled out of white flour.

Rye Flour--Flour made from rye berries. Rye flour behaves quite differently from wheat flour, and I'll be very specific about how to handle it when I give rye bread recipes. Pumpernickel is a type of rye flour.

Cornmeal--I use it mostly in anadama and salt rising bread. I always use stone ground.

Semolina--For pizza dough.

Sprouted wheat flour--Used for flavor. I sometimes use it, more often add a little diastatic malt to the mix. Technical explanations as to why don't make much sense to me, but it does taste good.

The photo shows a loaf of whole wheat sourdough bread, along with a crock I use for flour and an old wooden scoop.